


If I Did

by TheKnightsWhoSayBook



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Banter, M/M, Tattoos, cabeswarren, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKnightsWhoSayBook/pseuds/TheKnightsWhoSayBook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam wishes his skin said everything his mouth can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Did

"I would get a tattoo!"

"No you wouldn't."

"Alright, I wouldn't, but I could." Gansey is lying on the floor, propped up on one elbow so he can look out over his cardboard Henrietta, and Ronan is lying with his head braced against Gansey's bed so he can see Adam across the room.

"That's the point."

Adam glances up and Ronan turns his head to Chainsaw, prowling the perimeter of Henrietta like she might decide to destroy it. Ronan might decide to destroy something right now. Adam looks at the two of them like everything has already been destroyed.

"I would," Blue says. "I will." 

Noah flicks a piece of cardboard at her. They've been having a casual cardboard war with each other across downtown. "I'd get a moth on my shoulder. Or a skull on my arm." He thinks for a moment. "With flowers coming out of it."

"You're fucking _dead_ ," Ronan says. "Is that even possible?"

"Don't discriminate," Noah tells him, whatever that means.

"You should get that tarot card. That page of cups." It's the first time Adam's spoken in a while. His face, tilted up at the ceiling, is a study in shadows.

"Maybe I will. But maybe not exactly. I don't need tarot cards on my skin too, you know? Maybe I'd get the design incorporated into something else."

"I think you should get one that says Jane."

"I think you should get one that says Dick."

"I think you should get one that says Scary Feminist," Noah contributes.

"Who, me?" Gansey asks, which cracks Noah up for no reason.

"You should get Allergic to Bees," Adam said. "So if you get stung and pass out people will see and help."

"Medical bracelets. You're thinking of a medical bracelet."

Noah's run out of cardboard and has to surrender to the opposing general, who's looking very smug. "I think Blue should get her tattoo first so I can see it."

"I'm not getting it now. Sometime in a few years, maybe."

"But I want to see it," he insists, so she goes to find a pen.

"This is redundant. None of you would ever get a tattoo." He's waiting for Adam to say something, maybe contradict him or say what he'd get, but he only shrugs.

Blue comes back in their lapse of silence with a handful of pens. The first one makes a loud popping noise when uncapped and doesn't have a tip, probably thanks to Ronan's dreams. She starts drawing on her arm with the second one, the black ink thick and uneven. Noah steals a red one and starts drawing his flowerpot skull so of course soon they all have pens and scratchy drawings all over their arms.

"See? I'd get this tattoo." Gansey's drawn the lay lines on the soft inside of his wrist and some unintelligible writing down his arm that no one waits for him to explain. Noah is adding details to Blue's arm while Adam draws careful, deliberate lines down his. Ronan's written as many swearwords and combinations as he can think of and holds it up over his head while he thinks of more.

"We're all going to get ink poisoning," Gansey decides, and the rest of them snort.

The next day Ronan hasn't bothered to wash off his curse words, despite Gansey scrubbing his drawing carefully to remove all traces. Noah announces, before he disappears, that he's going to redraw his everyday so he can keep it. Blue's is already fading.

Adam keeps the sleeves of his Aglionby sweater rolled down around his wrists all week until one day Gansey catches sight of a loose thread of ink that sneaked out and catches his wrist before he can pull away. With the unravelling fabric pushed back the design in permanent ink is faded but relatively clear. A tangle of trees whose branches turn into ravens with hooked claws, a messy celtic knot woven with blurred images. Gansey almost can't help himself from mentioning that it looks an awful lot like Ronan's-- almost. He lets go of Adam without saying anything.

But it does. Like Ronan, filtered through Adam's eyes.


End file.
